Stunned, Thea watched him unlock the padlock with the keys he’d taken from the guard. He got the gun ready as he pulled back the bolt and opened the door with a shoulder shove, legs braced.

They made a dramatic entrance into what looked like a room from a run-down bed and breakfast from the Seventies. Chintzy wallpaper peeled away at the edges and there was a rough carpet, made brown with age rather than by design. A window let in some light, but the panes were misted up and condensation gathered in pools on the mould-speckled windowsill. Towards the back there was a door, its wood veneer scuffed off, which led to what must have been a bathroom.

However, it was the bed that drew their attention. It was a hospital bed, with bars on the side and white cotton linen, a drip standing guard on one side. It looked hugely out of place amongst the genteel decay.

But not as out of place as the man lying in it.

He was hooked up to the drip, the bed adjusted so he was half sitting, propped up on so many pillows he looked like a doll amongst them.

A frightening doll.

Skinny and blue-veined, the man had stubble greying his chin and bare feet that were hook-nailed and calloused. His head was completely bald and as smooth as porcelain and, just like fine porcelain, which is ever so slightly transparent, Thea and Ethan could see this man’s brain.

It was a tattoo. An elaborate, skull-covering tattoo.

Just as doctors sometimes had china phrenology heads in their surgeries and on those heads the brain was mapped out in neat little grids with tiny labels, so it was with this man. The design stretched all the way around his left eye socket, over his sparse eyebrows, the fine black lines giving his head the look of a cracked egg.

His eyes were closed as though in a restless, fidgety sleep.

Then they were open. Bloodshot and a bit wild.

And looking right at Thea.

She noticed he was handcuffed to the bed.

‘Where am I?’ His voice was croaky from lack of use, as cracked as his head.

‘Don’t go any closer,’ Ethan muttered to Thea.

‘Moses?’ Thea asked gently.

‘Who are you? Are you real?’ He writhed in the bed, the handcuffs scraping on the metal bars as he twisted his wrists.

‘Are you Moses Ing?’ Ethan said, louder.

‘I wasn’t here before! Where am I? Are you going to kill me?’ He started to wrench at the handcuffs, yelling and kicking his shackled feet hard against the mattress as he strained, his neck stringy with the effort.

Then just as suddenly, he flopped, completely still and stared at something in the far corner of the room.

‘What are you doing, Max?’ he said, quite softly now, watchful.

He listened to a reply that only he could hear.